Left/Right/Wrong/Maybe

Hi. I've got too many emails on Iraq to read, let alone publish. Here's a selection, pro and anti-war - including debate on Karen Jackson's controversial "10 reasons to be anti-American" piece and Helen Darville's Webdiary debut - and a grab-bag of protest actions on the go.

I interviewed Paul McGeough on the war, and his book From Manhattan to Baghdad, yesterday (the links are in the right-hand column of Webdiary). To those warbloggers fearful I might get my gear off at Saturday's Byron Bay "Disrobe to Disarm' protest, I'm off to Perth tomorrow to speak at the arts festival and intend to remain fully clothed in public. Webdiary will resume on Monday.

David Makinson recommends umich for a transcript of a Wall Street Journal advertisement by Republicans against the war.

Scott Burchill likes this quote from Hunter S. Thompson in Kingdom of Fear (Simon & Schuster, New York 2003, p.xix):

It would be easy to say that we owe it all to the Bush family from Texas, but that would be too simplistic. They are only errand boys for the vengeful, bloodthirsty cartel of raving Jesus-freaks and super-rich money mongers who have ruled this country for the last 20 years, and arguably for the past 200. They take orders well, and they don't ask too many questions.

The real power in America is held by a fast-emerging new Oligarchy of pimps and preachers who see no need for Democracy or fairness or even trees, except maybe the ones in their own yards, and they don't mind admitting it.They worship money and power and death. Their ideal solution to all the nation's problems would be another 100 Year War.

A Just Australia wants people to post their fridge ('fear') magnets to Philip Ruddock "to tell him that we want the detention camps closed down and a system for dealing with asylum seekers based on justice not fear".

Vanessa Wilson and many others like the idea of marking their terrorism kit "return to sender" and dropping it in the nearest mailbox. Ruediger Landmann suggests adding an anti-war message, eg Peace Takes Brains, Anything War Can Do, Peace Can Do Better, War is Expensive, Peace is Priceless, Read Between the Pipelines, Power to the Peaceful, How Many Lives Per Gallon?

Elliott Orr passes on this protest idea. "Place 1/2 cup uncooked rice in a small plastic bag (a snack-size bag or sandwich bag work fine). Squeeze out excess air and seal the bag. Wrap it in a piece of paper on which you have written, "If your enemies are hungry, feed them. Romans 12:20. Please send this rice to the people of Iraq; do not attack them." Place the paper and bag of rice in an envelope (either a letter-sized or padded mailing envelope) and address them to: Prime Minister John Howard, House of Representatives, Parliament House Canberra ACT 2600. He writes:

"In the mid-1950s, the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation, learning of famine in the Chinese mainland, launched a 'Feed Thine Enemy' campaign. Members and friends mailed thousands of little bags of rice to the White House with a tag quoting the Bible, "If thine enemy hunger, feed him." As far as anyone knew for more than ten years, the campaign was an abject failure. The President did not acknowledge receipt of the bags publicly; certainly, no rice was ever sent to China. What nonviolent activists only learned a decade later was that the campaign played a significant, perhaps even determining role in preventing nuclear war. Twice while the campaign was on, President Eisenhower met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to consider U.S. options in the conflict with China over two islands, Quemoy and Matsu. The generals twice recommended the use of nuclear weapons. President Eisenhower each time turned to his aide and asked how many little bags of rice had come in. When told they numbered in the tens of thousands, Eisenhower told the generals that as long as so many Americans were expressing active interest in having the U.S. feed the Chinese, he certainly wasn't going to consider using nuclear weapons against them."

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Rachel Thompson in London

Greetings from London. I've often felt disconnected from Australia even while living there, and do so now. I don't think I have ever seen such a simplistic debate on something so major. It's only about oil say Europeans and others who use far more Iraqi oil than the US does (but don't actually know this). It's about Daddy. It's a proxy for getting Osama. It's about dominating the world by threat of force. It's about whatever you hate about George W. Bush and his cohort - tax policy, Kyoto, prayers in the office at 7am every morning, loose use of the words good and evil.

There's a lot to dislike distrust about GWB but has it occurred to anyone in Herald Land that you're making Iraq (because it involves threat of force) a global referendum on the entire Bush Presidency and everything else you don't like about America (and Howard's Australia)? Personally I'm reminded of Churchill - got 95% of everything wrong, often due to narrow minded prejudice. Got Nazi Germany right.

Further, has anyone who's freaked out by all the Bush-Rummy-Rice hard talk stopped to wonder if it ain't actually you they're trying to freak out, but Mr Hussein? That the leaks about 800 cruise missiles a day are meant to spook Iraq's leaders? The gullibility of people everywhere to bog-standard megaphone diplomacy in the era of the internet is truly frightening - the inability to sort out who the message is for - and makes me wonder what would have happened to your heads in any standard fascist country when bombarded with same. Camp guards, quite a lot of you.

Here's my take on what this is "ABOUT". For twenty years, one region of the world has been exporting terrorism and oil while everyone else has been getting on with exporting the products of your basic Sydney consumer yuppie lifestyle.

Yes, the US had a hand in creating some of the enabling conditions. So did most every other member of the full Security Council circa 2003. Bush had Iraq on his list of "Clinton unfinished business" when he "got" into office but Sept 11 reordered it up his priority list. Not because of daddy, or oil, or Osama proxy hunting, but because of all the unaccounted for stuff that Hans Blix is so worried about and that is on the wish list of al-Qaeda's "nouvelle vague".

The other agenda is to start reordering the Middle East for a mix of reasons. Since 1973 the status quo you all love so much has served the world, and above all the people of the Middle East, really badly. Check out another wing of the UN on this, last year's Middle East Human Development Report, including what it has to say on that other "ogre", Israel.

The truly interesting stuff all the polling/commentariat can't tell me is whether Australians are motivated by recognition they live in a mildly to seriously anti-US region, economic self-interest (who cared about the Asian economic crisis so long as Ozzie didn't suffer) or genuine care for those Iraqi bastards we don't want coming in boats.

I'll put my money on base self-interest every time. Or just possibly maybe, Australia is becoming like Europe - a genuinely 'post-war' entity, notwithstanding the evidence of ANZAC Day martial nostalgia, the revival of blood and innocence metaphors over Bali and cricket's ongoing place in national self-esteem.

On the oil thing: What has been well leaked over and over but doesn't seem to make it to Australia is that the US intends to give the country to the opposition groups a la Afghanistan, so the benefits accrue from the opposition coalition-soon-to-be-running-the-joint to those who stood with them and the US. The Australian energy services industry is very well placed indeed. It should add at least a point to Australian GDP next year. But by then this year's history will have been pocketed by those who hate George Bush so much they hate the few smart things he does. And so it goes.

One of the tests of individual motivation on all this will be how people react to the scenes of jubilation in Baghdad, Basra etc when Mr Hussein walks at the last minute or the 101st airborne and 4th armoured infantry prevail at surprisingly low civilian cost and infrastructure damage. With shared jubilation mixed with sorrow it took so long or with cynicism I-was-still-right cliches? Not to mention the dawning realisation that effective deterrence and coercive disarmament has been updated from the depths of 1963 for the post-Sept 11, post-Bali, 21st century borderless world.

There is a much bigger story here. The "Yanks" leadership don't have it all right but they do have a clearer set of eyes than most of us, like them or not. (And I don't.)

The real issue basically isn't "WHY", but "Why right now" this year? To which my answer is that four fifths of the Iraqi people are nearly starving, dependant on nice guy Clinton's oil-for-food system that lets chemicals and dual use equipment in while depriving the people of basic economic rights. Next year is too far off for them.

Bring it on and get it over with quickly.

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LEFT/RIGHT

Helen Darville

The left may be right, but they'll never win the argument while they belittle the opposition.

The best comment any Webdiarist has made about the left's tendency to 'seize the moral high ground' is from M. Mercurius in Alternatives to war. S/he notes:

"The doves can get down off their high horse and stop lumping the hawks in the same camp as SH and that debating chestnut, Adolf Hitler. Please. If the doves want to raise the rhetorical stakes like that, I could draw parallels between the present pacifists and the attitude of the pre-WWII British and Europeans who simply ignored the evidence and disbelieved that anything like the holocaust could possibly be happening in the 'civilised' West - or the post-WWII world that ignored the ethnic cleansing in Serbia until it was too late."

Daniel Maurice's criticisms of Webdiary and the left (Placing confidence in a Loving God) may seem a tad intemperate (Jack Stack's are probably just plain intemperate), but in the light of the above, I can see where both are coming from, even though I think there's a little more light and shade out there - at least as far as Webdiary goes. I've personally been on the receiving end of attacks from lefties mounted on high horses, and it's very, very unpleasant - not to mention self-defeating.

I think the lefties are probably right on Iraq, almost certainly right on Israel-Palestine and definitely right on SIEV-X. However - apart from Iraq - they're losing or have already lost the argument on the other issues, and are in danger of snatching defeat from the gaping jaws of victory on Iraq, especially if the UN Security Council passes a resolution authorising military action. There are a whole slew of further issues I haven't even touched on that could go the same way.

It seems to work like this: lefties make fun of GWB's low IQ, Howard's toadying, the fact that Ariel Sharon has the misfortune to have a face like a Nazi caricature, US foreign policy, whatever.

This 'fun' (it is almost never legitimate, factual criticism) is couched in terms that compares the individual in question to Hitler, makes snide assumptions about his lack of intelligence, and assumes that he has lousy taste in music, clothing and literature. 'GWB reads far too many Tom Clancy novels' was one comment that turned up on a usenet group from someone who was clearly horse-riding with the 'moral classes'. The tendency to be short on facts and long on moral worthiness is something that several Webdiarists have pointed out in relation to Carmen Lawrence's less than authoritative contributions to the Iraq debate.

M. Mercurius is right, by the way - Hitler is brought up in every high school debate, often by both affirmative and negative, and often in support of diametrically opposed points. There's nothing like a portmanteau historical figure, I suppose.

In the past it was Pauline Hanson - she copped the unforgettable tag-line 'lumpenproletariat hag' from one member of the chattering classes [Malcolm McGregor in the Financial Review, July 8, 1996]. Ruddock, meanwhile, has been labelled racist so often now that the term risks being drained of all meaning. What happens - once we have turned good, strong words like 'racist' and 'anti-semite' to mush - when we encounter examples of the real thing? I believe the phenomenon in question is known as 'crying wolf'.

Stephen King once memorably described the sort of lefties who assume the 'moral high ground' as a matter of course as 'the Whale people'. "It's about being right [....] They're the new Puritans, as far as I'm concerned, people who believe that if you don't think the way they do, you're going to Hell - only their version of Hell is a place where all you can get on the radio is hillbilly music and all you can find to eat is chicken-fried steak." [Insomnia, p 262].

Substitute 'country and western' for 'hillbilly music' and 'meat pies' for 'chicken-fried steak' and this comment becomes true of Australia.

My point is simple: no-one likes a sanctimonious prig. In my experience most Australians run a mile when confronted by churchmen who 'come on all moral'. Is it any wonder that we do likewise when told by journalists and intellectuals that support for a war on Iraq is 'stupid', that George W Bush is 'stupid', that we are 'stupid' (not to mention racist) for supporting Howard and Ruddock on the detention of asylum seekers, or for criticising the sillier manifestations of multiculturalism?

I'll never forget when Robert Manne put support for Hanson's views on Aborigines on a par with a belief in UFOs or channelling, commenting that "many mainstream Australians endorse the truth of the latter". And this proves what? That he had the good fortune to receive a university education? That being a public intellectual automatically insulates him from believing in ridiculous claptrap? Yeah, right.

If the left are going to win any of these arguments, they need to get off their high horses and share a few meat pies with the people whose views they are so fond of deriding. It's that simple.

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Robert Lawton of Adelaide, in London

Dipped in to Webdiary today after many weeks away ... oh for the days when as a leisurely servant of the people I could write 300 words on my chosen topic! Now I'm a harassed postgrad trying to get by in an English winter.

I wanted to write however and praise M. Mercurius - her or his views on the painful realities for both the pro and antiwar camps compelled me to write something too.

I have to say that in the end, the peacemakers can only point to the devastation of carpet bombing from which Iraq will be saved; the civilian deaths that will not take place; the horrors of chemical and biological - to say nothing of nuclear - weapons that the region will be saved. They can ONLY point to these things because they cannot argue with any force that Saddam's rule in Iraq is ending; that there is any prospect of his being overthrown without outside intervention; or that he is good for his country or the region, or holds his country by valid means.

Nor are these things true of people like Kim Il Sung, Robert Mugabe, the Burmese SLORC, or the hideous and little-known president of tiny Gabon in West Africa, Omar Bongo, who has held power without democratic interruption since 1967.

But the twin realities of Saddam's lengthy continuing terror campaign against the Kurds and the southern Shi'ites and the failure of Allied nerve in January 1991 when the opportunity to remove his regime existed, signify to me that any measured US effort to enforce the UN resolutions which followed Gulf War I is justified and indeed overdue.

Of course oil men and women are driving this war. Of course the tyranny of the Security Council and the nature of the global economy block the potential for "just wars" to liberate the Tibetans from China, or the Chechens from the murderous Russian army. Of course the post war wash-up might be appalling, and a new US client in Iraq might turn on his master again in 20 years or less.

But "good wars" can be fought from bad motives. Consider Russia's war on Germany from 1942, or the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia which bought the Khmer Rouge down.

In the end one must decide whether loss of life, even massive loss, vast destruction of property, and the potential of a trail of misery in Iraq stretching years into the future, can let one call a war "just".

I say that although America's war rhetoric over 50 years has cheapened justice as a motive, we cannot assume peace to be the only solution to all international conflict only because war has grown so very dreadful.

We cannot fight all the just wars. Are we then to fight none of them?

I still wonder why Britain and Australia (among others) are required on the ground, however. Lend the bases, the satellites and the computers, OK. But for my money, US politics cut the last war short and it is Bush's job - not Blair's, Howard's or anyone else's - to remove Saddam and assure US interests in Iraq. The cars that need Iraqi oil are overwhelmingly in Dallas, San Diego and Chicago, not Brisbane or Bristol.

The great lie that Tony Blair mouths about Iraq's threat to the UK makes the rest of his position far weaker. The US doesn't need allies. They are only a figleaf, and naked war is what we will be getting soon. Honesty is better than hypocrisy, even in these circumstances.

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David Makinson

History will teach us.... what? It is a common tactic of those supporting the forthcoming suppression of Iraq to cite historical events as supporting "evidence" for their case. They have to. Their interpretations of history - and how they think it might influence coming events - are pretty much all they have.

History also helps to understand the "context", they tell us. On this aspect, perhaps they are right - to a degree - though I think it's fair to be very sceptical of this approach. History may indeed provide background context, but it is just too much of a stretch to say that it will determine what's likely to happen next. Those of us who are opposed to the coming war are sometimes sucked into these historical arguments, tricked into playing the pro-war game. I know I've fallen into this trap myself sometimes.

The key question we face today is: Is this war necessary? I believe the question can only be answered honestly and objectively if we view it in the context of today, and the probabilities and risks that today's circumstances generate. I am not arguing that we should dismiss history as an indicator, but if we are to make a genuine effort to assess the risks, we need to relegate history to its appropriate place. It is a factor amongst many. It can and probably should influence your consideration, but it cannot be key.

History can only become truly relevant to today's crisis if you think the motives and intentions of the people in power remain static. Our responses must live and breathe in the here and now.

Is it relevant to argue that the US once viewed Saddam Hussein with favour? That the US has in the past turned a blind eye to his evils? I doubt it. These facts raises questions about motives and events at that time, but they provide no real pointers as to what's likely to happen now.

Is it relevant for the pro-war lobby to use WW2 to support their case? Is Saddam the new Hitler? This seems deeply silly. Is it relevant for the anti-war lobby to use Vietnam, Chile, Nicaragua, etc to support their case? Ditto, I'm afraid.

Is it relevant to point to John Howard's long list of past deceptions and and omissions? No - it's today's untruths that matter. And so on.

For those who feel history deserves a place much higher up the ladder of our assessment, Can Saddam Be Contained? History Says Yes is an outstanding essay by two American professors that uses this approach (owing to a recent case of mistaken identity, I am quite interested in professors these days). In a similar vein, see Keeping Saddam Hussein in a Box
. [The second piece was published in the New York Times earlier this week. Some of this material has also been used by Paul Kelly in The Australian].

These pieces make heavy use of historical "evidence" but this time from an anti-war perspective. More importantly they go on to make a compelling case that containment/deterrence has worked, will continue to work, and is a far lower risk option than war. In short, the war is unnecessary. The risks of war far outweigh the risks of containment/deterrence. I note that these are American voices - yet more reasons to be pro-American.

I wrote recently on the facile manner in which right-wing politicians and commentators use this catch-cry to summarily dismiss opposition (In defence of America). I set out a case for being pro-American, even if anti-Administration. Most people have accepted my point, but it's also been pointed out to me by quite a few people that anti-Americanism is not only real, but is becoming more and more common.

This does not mean anti-American opinion should be dismissed only on that basis, but it certainly renders those commentators vulnerable to accusations of entrenched bias. Headlines like "Confronting Empire" are not going to help the people of Iraq, so I'm not sure this is a particularly useful or productive tactic. In this sense those commentators could be seen to be similar to the pro-war lobby that they oppose.

That said, the pro-war side seems to see deliberate bias as a virtue, so their everlasting whining about anti-Americanism is expedient at best.

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Neil Watson

Do you or any of your correspondents have any sympathy at all for Iron Jack Howard? I recall that in late 1999 he was being excoriated and branded as 'gutless for refusing to invade East Timor until there was a UN backed force.

The war with Indonesia crowd wanted Aussie bayonets blooded immediately, damn the collateral damage and the consequences for children, just stick it up the Javanese and their collaborators. Ample justification under international law for unilateral action, they cried. No thought for consequent relations with the Muslim world or with Indonesia.

I do hope the clerics now arguing against any kind of action against Iraq are not the Church militants who wanted death and destruction - in a good cause, of course - in East Timor. The thought that war doesn't solve anything was lost in 1999 amid hysterical jingoism. Waiting for the UN didn't help us anyway, as we are now top of Ossie's hit list, as enunciated in one of his video clips.

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THE 'ANTI-AMERICANISM' DEBATE

John Steele in Miami, FL

As an American, I was fascinated by the comments of Karen Jackson in Alternatives to war. After ripping the US up one side and down the other in Oh Superman, she apparently felt the need to apologize ever so slightly - after all she was rather cross at the time - then proceeded to explain her vision for a Utopian world with a truly effective United Nations.

Ms. Jackson wants a world where human rights are respected, people engage in true participatory democracy and poverty and violence are eliminated. Well guess what, we all want that Ms. Jackson, even Americans. But surprise, playing John Lennon or singing Kumbaya is not going to get us there. Unfortunately, there are people in the world like bin Laden, Robert Mugabe, Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler ... the litany goes on and on. It isn't the story of America, it's the story of mankind and it's been going on since we climbed down from the trees.

Ms Jackson wants liberation for Iraq - if she had been paying attention that's what President Bush is talking about: liberation.

She wishes for ongoing aid to help rebuild and recover and using Iraq's oil wealth to feed and educate the population. Who said that won't happen? Why does she assume that America is planning to steal the oil from Iraq to run our SUVs? She's willing to accept that we mean exactly what we say about disarming Saddam, but not willing to accept that we mean what we said about the oil revenues being used to rebuild Iraq.

She criticizes a mere $5 million to build a new hospital in Afghanistan, neglecting that $5 million is a king's ransom in their present economy. $5 million may not go far in Australia or America, but it will build and equip quite a hospital in Kabul. She doesn't want to hear about the 300 plus schools that have been repaired or rebuilt by American soldiers since the fall of the Taliban, quite aside from the significant humanitarian work by other coalition partners.

As Americans we've often fallen short of perfection, but at least we've tried. Sometimes it seems that we get blamed for everything wrong in the world, whether we had anything to do with it or not. We seem to get lambasted if we do something wrong, and we get blamed if something is wrong and we don't fix it.

In some circles we've been blamed for having created Hussein, an assertion I would question - he was already a tyrant when we found him. However, if one accepts that we may have been involved in helping him along the way, now we get criticized for trying to correct the error.

Until Ms Jackson's utopia arrives, the responsibility of the President of the United States is first and foremost to protect our country. If, along the way, Ms Jackson's safety is improved that's fine, but at the end of the day our President must act in our interest - with or without the approval of Ms Jackson, France or the United Nations. I'd hope that Ms Jackson would expect Mr. Howard to do the same for her.

In closing however, I thought it was particularly generous of her to propose that America expend our sons and daughters to police the world when directed to do so by her newly invigorated United Nations. In her UN utopia, Ms. Kingston can sleep tight, apparently secure in the knowledge that American soldiers are ready to die for her if the Security Council tells us to. Thanks, I think we'll take a pass.

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Damian Lataan in Verdun, South Australia

Why don't we just cut straight to the chase. Anyone who believes that George Bush wants to invade and/or occupy Iraq because Saddam Hussein has WMD and is a threat to world peace is simply living in mainstream media argumentively politically correct ga-ga-land.

It's straightforward. George W. Bush wants to occupy Iraq - by any means as long as he ends up occupying it - so that the US has hegemony over the region both militarily and economically. This is not something he and his neoconservative cronies have just dreamt up and it has absolutely nothing to do with the 'War on Terrorism'.

Bush, with his side-kicks Tony Blair and John Howard, have - almost - conned the rest of the so-called Western World into thinking that, while Iraq may or may not have had anything to do with terrorism in the past, it may well do so in the future if it is allowed to continue to exist with Saddam at the helm. If this was their only concern then containment via a strong permanent UN presence is all that would be needed. So why the need to have several tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of people dead in order to achieve this? Simple. Containment denies Bush and his cronies control over the region.

As for the idea of Bush and his mates having dreams of global dominance, of which all of what is happening now is a result, look no further than The Project for the New American Century website. Here you will find a list of all of Bush's mates who have signed up to the grand plan of Being In Charge of Everything in the World. The ideas expressed are frightening. The problem is, of course, that the world has fallen for it.

Bush and Blair have cajoled, bribed and threatened the governments of many of the involved nations, in most cases against the will of their people, to allow Bush and his cohorts to have their way in Iraq. And this is just the first step in their grand plan for the New American Century. The most frightening aspect is the fact that the United Nations, the only vehicle this planet has to ensure a stable war-free world, has been used, no, abused, by Bush and his mates to push forward with their hideous ideas.

The upshot is that no matter what happens now, the United Nations is buggered. If the UN Security Council gives the green light for Bush and his allies to go into Iraq then the UN has simply become subservient to Bush's hegemonic dreams of global economic and military domination. If the UNSC does not give the go-ahead and Bush and his allies take it upon themselves to go in anyway, then the UN will have demonstrated its willingness to be dominated by Bush. To be subservient to, or dominated by, amounts to the same thing.

If the UN, that peak body which the world looks to for the maintenance of peace and negotiated settlements to disputes, becomes dominated by the US, a nation that seems quite willing to use economic and/or military force whenever it thinks it can get away with it on any nation that is not willing to bend to their interests, then the whole world is in big trouble.

The answer? All the people of this entire planet have to collectively stand up as one and, from wherever they are in the world, face in the general direction of Washington, DC, and, with the back of the hand pointing in the same direction and raised high, show Bush the middle finger! Go to a demonstration near you. Do not be afraid of showing your fear of a world dominated by the likes of Bush.

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SIEV-X and IRAQ

Tony Kevin

There are important connections between establishing accountability for the SIEV-X tragedy, and the growing debate over whether Australia should take part in a US-led invasion of Iraq.

Of the 353 people including 146 children and 142 women who drowned when the asylum-seeker vessel known SIEV-X sank on its way to Christmas Island on 19 October 2001, the majority were Iraqi refugees from Saddam's regime. There is growing evidence that SIEV X was deliberately overloaded and sabotaged to sink, as a final deterrent solution to halt people smuggling from Indonesia to Australia. And it worked the flow of boats stopped almost immediately.

Evidence steadily accumulates that the Egyptian people smuggler who admits he co-organised the SIEV X voyage, Abu Quassey ( aka Mootaz Hasan) could have been an undercover sting agent working with Indonesian Police special people smuggling disruption teams that had been set up, trained, funded and equipped by the Australian Federal Polices people smuggling disruption program, run out of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta.

There has been intense Senate concern over this case. Two opposition majority motions were passed on 10 and 11 December, calling for a full powers independent judicial inquiry into the sinking of SIEV-X , and calling for serious efforts by the Australian and Indonesian governments to bring Abu Quassey and his associates to justice for the sinking of SIEV X.

Labor Senate Leader John Faulkner has strongly questioned since September the legality of the disruption program, and the Australian Governments possible involvement in the sinking of asylum-seeker boats.

Since early December, Australian Justice Minister (Senator Chris Ellison) and the Australian Federal Police Commissioner (Mick Keelty) have claimed repeatedly that AFP is seriously trying to bring Abu Quassey to Australia to face people smuggling charges.

Now the hollowness of those claims has been exposed by Indonesia's Justice Minister Mahendra, who was reported last Saturday as saying that Australian authorities were not making any real effort to negotiate with his government for the deportation of Quassey to Australia. Mahendra said his government would consider seriously any such request if it were made. If not, Mahendra said, Quassey will be deported to Egypt.

What are the connections with an Iraq war? If Australian agencies are trying to cover up accountability in the deaths of 353 asylum-seekers most of whom were Iraqi refugees, what does this tell the world about Australian Government concern for Iraqi lives?

Can a government that fears judicial scrutiny be trusted to make sound policy judgements over involving Australia in a war that may kill or render homeless huge numbers of Iraqi civilians?

After SIEV-X, one would have thought that any responsible Australian government would consider very carefully the ethics of a decision to take part in an unjust war against Iraq.

And one would also think that with such a war in the offing, any responsible Australian government would be urgently concerned to establish the full truth of what happened to sink SIEV-X and drown 353 people.

Yet if the Australian Senate and Mr Mahendra are to be believed, the present Australian Government just does not care.